#PPOD: Pictured, behind this darker cloud, is a pileus iridescent cloud, a group of water droplets that have a uniformly similar size and so together diffract different colors of sunlight by different amounts. T Also captured were unusual cloud ripples above the pileus cloud. The formation of a rare pileus cloud capping a common cumulus cloud is an indication that the lower cloud is expanding upward and might well develop into a storm. Credit: Jiaqi Sun
Taken at Lake Wanaka, New Zealand, this beautiful image of the Milky Way's core included a surprise guest star - red sprites! These large-scale electrical discharges occur at about 50-90 km in altitude, in the Earth's mesosphere.
#PPOD: Olympus Mons, the largest known volcano in the Solar System, as captured by ESA's Mars Express spacecraft. The volcano is about 620 km across and 21 km tall. The textured landscape at the bottom is made up of giant landslide deposits.
Credit: ESA/Mars Express; Processing: Jacint Roger Perez
#PPOD: This stunning photo was taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) onboard the ESA's Mars Express spacecraft. Phobos is the larger and closer of Mars's two moons, the other being Deimos. One hypothesis of their origin involves the possible capture of primitive asteroids. Unfortunately, Phobos is being pulled apart and closer by Mars's tidal forces and gravity. Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/ @andrealuck CC BY (https://www.flickr.com/photos/192271236@N03/53635851891/)
#PPOD: What may look like a strangely nearby galaxy is actually a normal rocket's exhaust plume -- but unusually backlit. Like noctilucent clouds, the plume's brightness is caused by the Twilight Effect, where an object is high enough to be illuminated by the twilight Sun, even when the observer on the ground experiences the darkness of night. The spiral shape is caused by the Falcon rocket reorienting to release satellites in different directions. Credit: Seung Hye Yang
#PPOD: This near-infrared view of Saturn and the rings was taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in July 2017. Saturn is also showing ‘ringshine’, light reflected off the rings and onto the night side of the planet. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/CICLOPS/Kevin M. Gill
#PPOD: This is neither an impact crater nor a volcano. It is a perfect circular intrusion, about 10km in diameter with a topographic ridge up to 600m high. The Kondyor Massif is located in Eastern Siberia, Russia, north of the city of Khabarovsk. It is a rare form of igneous intrusion called alkaline-ultrabasic massif and it is full of rare minerals. The river flowing out of it forms placer mineral deposits. Credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team
“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.” - Carl Sagan
This image was taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft on 14 February at Sagan’s suggestion. Voyager was about 6.4 billion kilometers from our tiny dot of a world and heading out of our solar system.
#PPOD: The Moon's shadow, or umbra, is pictured covering portions of the Canadian provinces of Quebec and New Brunswick and the American state of Maine in this photograph from the International Space Station as it soared into the solar eclipse from 420 kilometers above the surface of Earth. The diameter of the shadow is 160 km. Credit: NASA
#PPOD: NASA's Voyager 1 probe launched in 1977 and is now the most distant human-made object from Earth, traveling through interstellar space. Recently, NASA engineers had to figure out why the probe was suddenly sending unreadable data. After nearly six months of analysis and re-programming, they got Voyager correctly transmitting again. Truly a feat of human ingenuity. Credit: Dave Granlund
#PPOD: All members of the Pluto system as taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft and shown at 1 km/pixel. Pluto and Charon, technically a binary planetary system, anchor this eclectic group, and the small moons are tantalizingly interesting as well. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Ted Stryk
The Juno mission's JunoCam has taken some lovely images in seven years at the gas giant, including this one of Jupiter's "eye" captured early on during Perijove 09. The key to these amazing pictures, however, is in the citizen scientists who process them. Learn more: https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing
#PPOD: This high-exposure photograph revealed Earth's atmospheric glow against the backdrop of a starry sky in this image taken from the International Space Station on Jan. 21, 2024. At the time, the orbital lab was 258 miles above the Pacific Ocean northeast of Papua New Guinea. The Nauka science module and Prichal docking module are visible at left. Credit: NASA, ESA/Andreas Mogensen
#PPOD: Amazing new images of Jupiter's moon Io have come down from NASA's Juno spacecraft! This one shows the volcanic world from only 2,800 kilometers away, which is the closest look we’ve gotten of Io in over 20 years of missions. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill
#PPOD: What better way to finish out the week than with this new image of Uranus taken by the JWST? Taken with NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), the picture shows the planet and its rings in new clarity. The planet’s seasonal north polar cap gleams in a bright white, and Webb’s exquisite sensitivity resolves Uranus’ dim inner and outer rings, including the Zeta ring—the extremely faint and diffuse ring closest to the planet. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
#PPOD: This 3D image of Ryugu was put together by Dr. Brian May, astrophysicist and guitarist for the British rock band Queen. The top and bottom are inverted compared to how we usually show the asteroid, and this photo has Ryugu’s south pole at the image top. The Otohime Saxum, which is a large boulder, is clearly visible.
Credit: JAXA, Univ of Tokyo, Kochi Univ, Rikkyo Univ, Nagoya Univ, Chiba Institute of Technology, Meiji Univ, Univ of Aizu, AIST; Claudia Manzoni, Brian May
#PPOD: On June 25, NASA’s #JWST turned to famed ringed world #Saturn for its first near-infrared observations of the planet. The initial imagery from JWST's NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) is already fascinating researchers. Saturn itself appears extremely dark at this infrared wavelength observed by the telescope, as methane gas absorbs almost all of the sunlight falling on the atmosphere. However, the icy rings stay relatively bright. Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/Andrea Luck
#PPOD: Please enjoy this amazing shot of the International Space Station passing in front of the Sun. Several solar prominences are also visible. If you look closely, you can also see the Dragon capsule docked to the ISS (inset, upper right). Credit & Copyright: Mehmet Ergün
#PPOD: This infrared view of Jupiter was created from data captured on 11 January 2017 with the Near-InfraRed Imager instrument at Gemini North in Hawaiʻi. In the image, warmer areas appear bright, including four large hot spots that appear in a row just north of the equator. South of the equator, the oval-shaped and cloud-covered Great Red Spot appears dark.
Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA, M.H. Wong (UC Berkeley) et al.; Acknowledgments: M. Zamani
#PPOD: This massive dust storm was captured by multiple Martian orbiters on June 1, 2022. The composite here is compiled from images taken by China's Tianwen-1 spacecraft. The storm looms near the mighty Olympus Mons (not seen in this photo).
#PPOD: Saturn's moon Enceladus was caught spraying icy vapor into space from its south pole. Image taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on May 2, 2012. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/CICLOPS/Jason Major
#PPOD: View of the north polar region of Jupiter's moon Io, in approximate natural color, made from images captured with NASA's Galileo spacecraft on March 28, 1998. The background is filled with Jupiter's clouds. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ Galileo Imaging Team/Jason Major
#PPOD: Mimas drifts along in its orbit against the azure backdrop of Saturn's northern latitudes in this true-color view. The long, dark lines on the atmosphere are shadows cast by the planet's rings. At the bottom, craters on icy Mimas (398 kilometers) give the moon a dimpled appearance. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute/CICLOPS
#PPOD: Some of the incredible solar activity was captured last month by spacecraft near the Sun, including these plasma tornadoes. These walls of plasma are higher than the Earth is in diameter. And, of course, all this solar activity has provided us with stunning aurorae. With solar maximum approaching, chances are high that we'll see more incredible views like this one! Credit: NASA